Advertising - Reporting bad ads

[Boubouille]

We can't control everything happening within advertising companies and it sometimes happen. We've been hunting this one for a few days but these guys are getting good are going around filters. Below is a nice mail from my marketing guys.

We currently work with seven remnant providers out of the hundreds out there. It’s easy to start a deal with one, but we take extreme care in the selection process. We look at what they offer to see if it fits our plans, and make sure that reputable sites and reputable advertisers work with the ad network. When the deal starts, I speak with the account representative to lay down basic guidelines as to what kinds of ads we allow and what we don’t allow, in terms of ad categories but also specific advertisers. Very rarely an ad from a blocked category or advertiser may show up, either due to a misconfiguration on remnant provider’s or our side OR circumvention by the advertiser. We are concerned here with the latter two situations and what to do when one is spotted.

For your reference, we ALREADY block the following kinds of ads:

• Gold selling, or anything related to it
• Male health (e.g. Viagra)
• Adult
• Alcohol
• Dating
• Gambling
• Sweepstakes
• Political
• Religious
• Suggestive (usu. sexually provocative)
• Tobacco
• Excessive flashing
• Warning (e.g. ad that appears to be a warning window from your computer)
• Uninitiated audio (audio starts playing without user enabling)
• Pop-under (pop-up window that appears behind current window)
• Pop-up
• Floating (e.g. elements in ad float above page’s content. Disable by clicking a sometimes difficult-to-see x/close button)

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Static Ad - What to do if you see something weird, offensive, or ugly:
1. Right-click on the ad --> select ‘Properties’
2. Copy & paste the ‘Location URL’
3. Right-click on the ad --> select ‘Copy Link Location’ (Firefox) or ‘Copy Shortcut’ (Internet Explorer)
4. Paste the URL (this is the click-through URL)
5. Post these two URLs, along with the URL of the page where you saw the ad.

The location URL and click-through URL will provide the image-hosting server (usu. the ad network) and any other information necessary to take action.

Flash Ad - What to do if you see something weird, offensive, or ugly:
1. Take a screenshot of the browser window (Alt+Print Screen… to the right of the F12 key)
2. Post the screenshot along with URL of the page where you saw the ad
3. Any other information you can provide will be helpful, such as which browser and which version of browser you were using, approximate number of pages you viewed on the web site before seeing the ad, and country from which the ad was viewed (if outside the United States)
4. Ideally use the dev tools built into Firefox (Ctrl + Shift + I), Chrome (Ctrl + Shift + I), or IE (F12) to find the HTML of the ad. You can see an example of what to look for here.
5. Grabbing the URL of a flash ad requires an add-on or tool to view the HTTP headers when a page loads. Given this, the easiest way to take action is for me to reproduce the occurrence. If you're using Firefox go in Tools > Page Info > Media, look for anything that says "Embed" on the right and do a right click > copy to report this address in your mail as well.

===========================

Some of you may have seen diet/weight loss ads in the past day or two. This kind of ad does not fall into any existing category. It’s not adult-themed, sexually suggestive, dealing with alcohol or tobacco, etc. If anything, it falls under “Wellness,” which is generally considered to be a good thing, so it doesn’t go through any filters. This is generally how sub-par ads reach us. If you see any ads that you feel don’t belong on our site, please follow the directions above.

[superbotje]

All adds are bad, especially the flickering ones that make reading a page give you a headache.
Mozilla ftw! + flashblock

[Deleted]

All adds are bad, especially the flickering ones that make reading a page give you a headache.
Mozilla ftw! + flashblock

How did this post help anyone?
It didn't.
Maybe you want to re-read this:

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Static Ad - What to do if you see something weird, offensive, or ugly:
1. Right-click on the ad --> select ‘Properties’
2. Copy & paste the ‘Location URL’
3. Right-click on the ad --> select ‘Copy Link Location’ (Firefox) or ‘Copy Shortcut’ (Internet Explorer)
4. Paste the URL (this is the click-through URL)
5. Send these two URLs to me along with the URL of the page where you saw the ad

The location URL and click-through URL will provide the image-hosting server (usu. the ad network) and any other information necessary to take action.

Flash Ad - What to do if you see something weird, offensive, or ugly:
1. Take a screenshot of the browser window (Alt+Print Screen… to the right of the F12 key)
2. Send screenshot along with URL of the page where you saw the ad
3. Any other information you can provide will be helpful, such as which browser and which version of browser you were using, approximate number of pages you viewed on the web site before seeing the ad, and country from which the ad was viewed (if outside the United States)

[Roger]

All adds are bad, especially the flickering ones that make reading a page give you a headache.
Mozilla ftw! + flashblock

Thanks for this. Flashblock is awesome.

[Nazhghal]

Thank you for this and everything you've done. 8)

Short question:
Are there any reasons, why MMO Champion is not in the US/EU Blizzard Fansite Program?
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/community/fansites.html

[Boubouille]

Follow up on the gold selling ads issue.

It seems to be geo-targeted to all countries outside of the US. It's probably coming through **********, and they are redirecting to Google.All remnant ads running on MMO-C targeted outside of the US will be stopped until this is fully resolved.

[HellBurn]

Thx boubouille. Nice to see you're taking initiatives

[Gravlax]

Yeah It's nice to hear sites taking these kind of actions, no one minds little adverts (preferably for something relevant) but flashing buzzing bloody things and popups are just infuriating.

I wonder if anyone reacts favourably to those, if not surely its just bad advertising....hmm

[Doctor Hilarious]

Do those creepy dancing mortgage ads fall under the category of weird (can't recall if I've seen them here as I am not in the habit of recording the location of every ad I see, but it seems like some examples of what meets the requirements of objectionableness to avoid a stream of over zealous reports)?

And Olison Schmolison, do please explain how your post was more helpful than the one above it?
Certainly pasting a fairly sizable portion of another post visible shortly above yours isn't providing information that would otherwise not have been there.
Also, it looks like one of your superfluous quotes (the larger one) lacks proper citation, but it may be that it just isn't showing up for me.
So if you could clarify whether you feel helpfulness is found in condescension, or redundancy, that would be great.

Oh, and looks like someone found his or her post helpful.

[Xs]

Was wondering where they went
One thing I've noticed (viewing from the UK) is that the little *new* post icons on the latest posts on the main page seem to have disappeared, linked times with the ads disappearing
Is this just coincidence or will they come back when you can fix the ad standards



Hadn't viewed any of those posts and haven't changed any settings since I registered
The icon ( ) works perfectly fine on the normal forum pages
using firefox 3

[sassal]

There seem to be alot of very Adult adds on the pages of MMO-Champion just recently. These include references to adult material such as sex and viagra. Has anyone else noticed these?

[Marakara]

http://i44.tinypic.com/641gs2.jpg
More annoying than anything else. Seen it a couple times in google chrome, still have the tab open if you need any other info.

If it's something just with my browser, feel free to delete my post.

edit: computer crashed, no longer have the tab with the ad open.

[Gravlax]

Not sure if you can do anything about this one but the live streaming of Hodir has adverts "Buy Deadly Gear" and a link to PGMX powerleveling site.

[Cleanse]

http://i44.tinypic.com/641gs2.jpg
More annoying than anything else. Seen it a couple times in google chrome, still have the tab open if you need any other info.

If it's something just with my browser, feel free to delete my post.

edit: computer crashed, no longer have the tab with the ad open.

Had the same issue as above...

[12:09] <iNs|Renew> the Arizona ad. it sits directly to the right of the WotLK and BC left side menu. Bad CSS or annoying way of getting a page refresh...

A page refresh usually works, but that is retarded site design.

[Subpar]

I'm not sure if you know this, but blizzard has been banning accounts using lowerping recently. I'm not sure if you want to be advertising a service that is not supported by blizzard. While it works, blizzard sees many computers connecting from the same routing IP and think it is a gold farming service and they end up banning many innocent players and it's something that should be avoided.

[saranya]

was on the site today and picked up a hidden trojan in one of the ads being served. unfortunately, didn't catch which one.

just a fyi.

[bleggeh]

if you're running firefox just DL the add-on: Ad Block Plus from the firefox website and it will block almost all ads, a few like mlg may get through but its really nice.

[cronix]

if you're running firefox just DL the add-on: Ad Block Plus from the firefox website and it will block almost all ads, a few like mlg may get through but its really nice.

When i was still using firefox the best and only addon i used short of themes was no script. Disables ALL scripts before hand you then can enable ONLY the relevant scripts on the page you need to load and it automatically saves those settings for each site. Never saw an ad once. Even the google analatics or w/e they use for "research purposes" never loaded, even tho that was on every page without fail.

[Vordie]

ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

Hm.. Okey..

[Sammysam]

if you're running firefox just DL the add-on: Ad Block Plus from the firefox website and it will block almost all ads, a few like mlg may get through but its really nice.

No script works wonders for me. Any pop-up blocker in addition to Firefox is a smart choice.